The New Archaeology 



Bv CLARK W I 8 S L E R 



THERE was a time when being 

 an archaeologist meant being a 

 mere collector of curious and 

 expensive objects once used by man. 

 Such an archaeology could make no just 

 claim to a place in anthropology, the 

 science of man. Its devotees vied with 

 one another to possess the greatest num- 

 ber of unique objects, and under the 

 stimulus of these interests the whole of 

 North and South America has been 

 ransacked to fill collectors' cabinets. 

 But, while these activities have added 

 something to our knowledge of man in 

 the New World, they are impotent to 

 answer the very questions we are all 

 interested in; namely, how long has 

 man been in America, whence did he 

 come, and what has l)een his liistory 

 since his arrival? 



Geology finds in the earth the story 

 of the world's origin and subsequent 

 career, and in an analogous fashion the 

 archaeologist finds in the ground the 

 story of man and his achievements. 

 The new, or the real archaeology is the 

 study of these traces and the formula- 

 tion of the story they tell. The funda- 

 mental questions we have enumerated 

 above are not only very real problems, 

 but very difficult ones. They are quite 

 comparable to the tasks faced by the 

 geologists. No mere collecting of 

 curios, however fine or expensive they 

 may be held to be, can in the least meet 

 the exacting conditions encountered l)y 

 the archaeologist. He must actually 

 dissect section after section of our old 

 Mother Earth for the empirical data 

 upon which to base his answers. It is 

 not merely the finding of things that 

 counts; it is the conditions and inter- 

 associations that really tell the story. 

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This is well illustrated in the case of 

 a famous Chaco ruin called Bonito, a 

 pueblo quite similar to the "Aztec" 

 ruin. A good many years ago Bonito 

 was dug into, and many fine pieces of 

 pottery and other relics found there 

 were brought to this ]\Iuseum, where 

 the choicest are now on view; but to 

 the questions, "how old is Bonito, how 

 long occupied," these fine curios can 

 give no answer. Last summer. !Mr. 

 Nelson, the American Museum's vet- 

 eran archaeologist, worked several weeks 

 on what was left of Bonito. He found 

 that the ash heap, or dump, had always 

 been in the same place, and by patiently 

 dissecting a vertical section of this 

 refuse he got the story of the ruin. We 

 now know that the builders of this 

 pueblo came to the site in a body and left 

 again within a few hundred years. We 

 know, also, that there were no impor- 

 tant changes in their arts and indus- 

 tries while residing there. Such are 

 the results of the real, or new archa?ol- 

 ogv, as a part of the science of anthro- 

 pology. 



There is no mystery about such work. 

 It is largely toil ; but toil under the di- 

 rection of a scientific mind. In the 

 same way, Mr. Nelson and his associ- 

 ates have worked out the status of more 

 than a hundred ruins in New Mexico 

 and Arizona. It can now be told at 

 what relative date each of these was 

 built, which is one of the first great 

 advances toward the story of prehis- 

 toric man in the United States. 



It is not alone among the ruins of 

 the Southwest, however, that the true 

 archaeological method is apj^licable. 

 Long ago traces of man were noted in 

 the Delaware A^alley, particularly at 



